amelodie

[amelodie]

/ Gordon Parks, Pianist Glenn Gould soaks his Hands in the Sink to limber up his Fingers before performing, 1955

[amelodie]

« When I think back on the year 1915, it seems to me that I still hear my friends tell me despondently: "I can't think of anything else! I can't read, I can't work, or find useful distractions (...), I only ruminate about our times, incessantly, until I'm nauseated (...). I've just had two hours of liberty—there was a time when I would have offered them to Tolstoy or Pascal. Today I read about [the war], or European colonial methods; issues that are entirely beyond my reach, but how to think of anything else?"

And perhaps we shouldn't strive to think of anything else; the point is not to turn our backs on our times, but to consider them calmly and thoughtfully. (...) It may be that the philosophy which absorbs you leaves no room for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness and rancour towards your fellow men, perhaps you have made up your mind to see in their activities nothing but greed and selfishness. (...) Do not be too eager to prove yourself right! Above everything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion. (...) My only ambition is to beg the world to look for anything which can lighten the present and future distress of mankind, to find what interests the soul in a life burdened with troubles and disillusionments, to honour more than ever the faithful and imperishable resources of our inner life. (...)

The storm rages on, the events escalate, worsen, never cease. Never have they seemed more complex, more severe, more demanding. More dangerous. Wherever we turn, an opinion holds up its head and vehemently solicits our belief. (...) Our convictions, our certainties, are at each other's throats. (...) Yet mankind, even in these terrible hours, is only seeking happiness. Men have set off to conquer happiness, clutching in their hands the tools which will forever destroy it. (...) The wrong direction the world has taken is so obvious, so cruel, so vast (...)

Regardless, I would suggest not to lose hope—so long as a single wallflower still opens, in April, over the ruins of the world. Like algae, like mosses, like these laborious lichens which attach to the very ruins their infinite need for happiness, we will find joy in our present affliction and we will grow it, like a wind-battered plant in the parched soil of a wilted world. »

— Georges Duhamel, La Possession du monde (translation mine) Written in 1917 as he worked as an army surgeon.

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Quick what are you doing RIGHT now (besides scrolling Tumblr)

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a poem for today. by mahmoud darwish & translated by fady joudah

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Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo sings the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows" [X]

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Saoirse Ronan Stars in a Quirky 50th Anniversary Music Video for Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’

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richard siken new afterword to crush 20th anniversary edition. will text ID it later i just wanted to yoink this from twitter his formatting was ass

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The Magnetic Fields - 100000 Fireflies | The Wayward Bus/ Distant Plastic Trees

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the only girl i ever loved was andrew in drag

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The agony of thinking you’re finished doing the dishes only to turn around and to your horror: the pot.

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飯山線 津南駅

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Halt, doomscroller! Your spirit is weary. It's time to log-off and consume a cardamom-spiced drink, preferably whilst reading obscene literature.

[amelodie]

A rare Shibayama inlaid ‘Mille-Fleurs’ tsuba, Japan, Meiji period (1868-1912). Photo: Sotheby’s.

of mokko form, each side decorated in the Shibayama style on a silver ground with a dense bouquet of mixed flowers including chrysanthemum, peony, hydrangea and sakura, all skillfully inlaid in stained mother-of-pearl, with elegant cloisonné enamel butterflies among peonies around the seppadai, mokkogata silver mounted mimi, 9.7cm.; 3.8in.

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To put me to bed? Take my clothes off, hold my head? Tuck me in, turn off the lights and tiptoe out? Eve would, wouldn't you, Eve? - If you'd like.

Anne Baxter & Bette Davis as Eve Harrington & Margo Channing in ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

[amelodie]

[amelodie]

Alexander Skarsgård on ‘Lorraine’ (May 23, 2025)

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We are also reading Aracelis Girmay’s “You Are Who I Love,” in which the speaker unfurls a list of people they love, people they want to see survive, people doing what those not committed to close and tender attention might call the daily tasks of living: a person stirring a pot of beans, a person selling roses out of a cart, a person crossing a border, a person carrying their brother home, a person singing Leonard Cohen to the snow. You, reader, do not personally know these people, but their motivations spark a familiar feeling—here is someone trying to survive in a world that can render a person unable to get out of bed. You, too, may love a person who cannot get out of bed, which is why you cherish the things that convey, I am trying to stitch together enough small moments to have a life for a little bit longer.

Hanif Abdurraqib, In Defense of Despair